AMD and Partners to Discuss the Future of Heterogeneous Computing This November.

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday said it would hold its AMD Developer Summit 2013, called “APU13,” on November 11-14, 2013 in San Jose, California at the McEnery Convention Center. The company’s third annual developer summit is expected to draw the architects and pioneers of the heterogeneous computing era, spanning silicon design, software development and tools, academia and emerging technologies.

“This year’s summit will build on the AMD commitment to lead and facilitate the heterogeneous computing era, with the remarkable attending benefits for moving the technology experience forward. Both AMD and the HSA foundation are excited to bring together technology influencers from all over the world to share in our vision and strategy for an open standard HC ecosystem,” said Phil Rogers, corporate fellow at AMD and president of the HSA foundation.

Previous AMD developer summits saw the formation of the heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) foundation in 2012 and the Microsoft announcement of C++ AMP in 2011. APU13 builds on that history with engaging sessions where attendees have the opportunity to learn more about next-generation software development, heterogeneous compute technologies and programming methods.

“We expect the summit to not only motivate future solutions and user experiences, but to also provide intense, provocative learning opportunities for an audience that is very important to us,” added Mr. Rogers.

Given the timeframe of the summit, it is quite likely that AMD will introduce its highly-anticipated code-named Kaveri accelerated processing unit (APU) at the show. The Fusion “Kaveri” chip will feature several general-purpose x86 Steamroller cores, Radeon HD graphics engine based on GCN architecture, an all-new memory controller as well as numerous HSA enhancements aimed to make it easier for developers to use different processing engines.

The APU13 agenda includes two new programs this year:

The summit will feature a series of updates from HSA foundation members that are collectively working to build a standards-based heterogeneous compute (HC) ecosystem. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation and enables high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption. Additionally, HSA supports a diverse set of high-level programming languages, thereby creating the next foundation in general purpose computing;

APU13 will also hold its first AMD ventures innovation summit to highlight software and application development companies that utilize and expand uses for AMD solutions.

“AMD exceeded my expectations with its first two developer summits. I saw an open and instructive exchange of ideas on software development, tools and APIs, free from the marketing hype that you get at many conferences,” said Jon Peddie, principal and founder of Jon Peddie Research.